The day after the revelation felt different-quieter, yet charged.
Every sound in the forest carried meaning, every flicker of moonlight seemed to watch. Even the pack moved with new sort of reverence around us, the way people walk near a sleeping storm.
Father called the training “bond work.” The elders called it “balancing.” Whatever name it had, it started at dawn.
We met in the clearing behind the packhouse, where the trees grew in perfect circles, older than the Red Moon Pack itself. A ring of stones marked the ground, etched with digits I didn’t recognize. When the morning mist clung to them, the carvings glowed faintly-silver, gold, and violet.
Lilly stretched her hands toward the circle. “It feels… alive.”
“It should,” Father said. “It was built by the first Luna lines. The sto
